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#44247 07/15/12 05:35 PM
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A favorite description of mankind is that we are dumb for letting the planet get into the condition it is in. I've been thinking about that and I'm not sure that dumb is a good description. The thing is that we are pretty smart to have been able to get the planet into this condition. And the reason we have gotten it into kind of a mess is that we just weren't evolved to live in large masses.

The huge number of people we have on the planet is the main reason that it has gotten a bit messed up. But the only reason that there are so many people is that we are so adaptable. Most life forms on Earth are adapted to a fairly specific environment. Most life forms have to rely on evolution to provide adaptations to meet changed conditions. We humans however can generally look at a different environment and almost on the spur of the moment produce cultural changes that allow us to live in those conditions. So we have been extremely successful at moving into all the habitats that used to be filled by other animals (or plants for that matter).

But at the same time we were adapted by evolution to live as hunter gatherers. Life was generally a feast or famine situation. Some years we would have good hunting/gathering, but some years we wouldn't. And there was no way to predict what would happen this year, as compared to last year. So we didn't really learn to think on a long term basis. We basically lived from year to year and didn't really have any thing to push us to think about the far future (like 2 or 3 years ahead).

Then came the growth of technology, particularly the industrial revolution. Since we hadn't been evolved to think about the far future, we just basically kept on the same way we started out. Work for something to keep us going through this year. We did start thinking farther ahead, maybe 5 or 10 years, or even to the time when we would be too old to work. But it was still a pretty short term thing. When we evolved what we did had a fairly small effect on the environment around us so we didn't realize that with the increased population we would start having a large effect on the environment.

Also it is hard to get people to see the long term effects of their actions, because in a hunter gatherer society I suspect that conservatism is a valuable thing. Fixing something when it ain't broke can lead to all kinds of troubles, so it works best if we keep on doing things the way we always did. There has always been a place for innovation, but it always had to battle against the ingrained conservatism. So evolution really hasn't adapted us to quick responses to things that don't have an immediately obvious result.

So the fact that we have lasted this long seems to say we are pretty smart, it's just that we have new challenges, and our innate conservatism is fighting to keep things the way they are. We can work things out and technology is what will get us through it.

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That is a very challenging post Bill. I have often felt that what you are saying is what is happening. Will we be able to ensure that our predicted population can continue to swarm over the planet as we threaten to do, without reaching a breaking point? Maybe we can, but as well as technology we are going to have to do something about our deeply held feelings of entitlement.

I think that until the citizens of first world countries realise they are not entitled to use 2/3 of the world's resources things will continue to look very bleak indeed. Similarly the rest of the world is naturally wanting all the things that the wealthy countries have. We have evolved 'entitled'. Our culture praises aspiration and greed, and more and more having it all is a substitute for contentment.

I do hope you are right. It really is time to start thinking differently. We have found out that growth cannot continue forever, despite what we were told.

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Bill

Quote:
The huge number of people we have on the planet is the main reason that it has gotten a bit messed up.


this is a huge planet !

there are only slightly below 7 billion people today.

if you were to place all of the 7 billion humans in a 1 meter square space , they would only occupy an area of 52 miles squared.

I would think that the main reason we have messed up the planet so much in such a short time is because we really are stupid people , we are stupid people because we are supid enough to rely on the stupid smart people for guidance , if we were smart people we would be powering almost everything using solar power and wind or other alternate energy sources that are highly available but are not affordable.

and if we would have taken that road decades ago the planet would not be in the shape its in today.

we had it , we didnt use it because it was priced out of range.

its still out of range for most people of the world.

so even though we have made many glorious progressions in technology and science and in almost all aspects of creature comfort.

YES , we really are that dumb.
or it would be better if we said that
those who could have been smart and chose to be stupid even though they were smart enough to know better are really that dumb.

in other words the people as a whole are not dumb , its the stupid smart people who really are that dumb.






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Quote:
I think that until the citizens of first world countries realise they are not entitled to use 2/3 of the world's resources things will continue to look very bleak indeed.


the citizens you call the first world cant afford to buy the
needed equipment to reduce their resource consumption , and
the overall cost seems to be increasing along with the overall reduction of income that would be used to buy that equipment with.

our stupid leaders have chosen to give our economic strength or power to the china vs where they live
by choosing free trade ( due to the love and worship they have for money )

so what was looking like a recovery from fossil fuel usage is
now more of a dependence on fossil fuel.

what was once shipped only a few hundred miles is now shipped several thousand miles from the china.

so how stupid is that?

its cheaper ( monetarily ) to use the slave labor in china
even if you have to ship every product half way around the world and that is why the worlds economic situation is in decline.

the U.S. had a civil war supposedly because of slavery.
does this mean that slavery is only slavery if it is occurring in the U.S.

and that all the first world countries now approve of the slavery in china and that is why they do business with china?

is the world trade organization a means of legalizing slavery
for the rich?

its really messed up and its a stupid situation we have gotten ourselves into.

do we need donald trump as president or even better the owners of international harvester , true faithful americans who will not budge on american values.

not this crap we have as leaders today.

I almost forgot to mention this ...

the U.S. has found a way to compete with the slave labor in china , we are now using our prison inmates to produce products.

which opens up a whole new can of crap.
( used to be can of worms , I just like to call crap crap)

so a prison inmate can now learn to build missles and all sorts of defense equipment along with furniture and who knows whats next.

this way when he gets out of prison he will have a trade.
problem is he will have to get another prison sentence in order to find work!!!

the company using the prison labor must pay the prison and the state where the prison is located in $0.12 an hour for the prisoners labor , much cheaper that the current
wages in china $0.30 an hour.

less jobs = more prisoners.
more prisoners = more money for the rich

I wonder how long it will be before the rich start having other rich people arrested so that they can exploit more slave labor.





did we really win WW2?


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Originally Posted By: Paul
this is a huge planet !

there are only slightly below 7 billion people today.

if you were to place all of the 7 billion humans in a 1 meter square space , they would only occupy an area of 52 miles squared.


You are right about the amount of space that would be required to contain the people of the Earth, but you are overlooking the amount of space that is required to support those people. When talking about predators one of the things that is important is the range of each one. For example several years ago I read a story about the Florida Panther which said that the range for a single specimen was about 250 square miles (about 650 square kilometers). I don't know what the equivalent "range" would be for humans, but I have no doubt that it is pretty large. Keep in mind that our "range" includes land to grow our food, land to collect water, and land to dispose of our refuse. And when we multiply that range by 7 billion it gets to be pretty large. And on top of that we need to allow room for all the other life forms on the planet, since it turns out that we may need them a lot more than we think we do. So our space requirements are indeed crowding the planet.

Bill Gill


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Bill

on the following page the cultivated land areas are expressed in
km^2 ( square kilometers )
not kilometers squared
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_use_statistics_by_country
the above page list the cultivated area of the world as 11.61%
and the total area of the world is 149,000,000 km^2

1 km^2 = 247 acres

thats 36 billion acres of land


thats 5.25 acres of land for each human on the earth.

http://www.gardensofeden.org/04%20Crop%20Yield%20Verification.htm

on average 1 acre can produce 29.2 pounds of food per day every day throughout the year.

if everyone grew his/her own food in his / her 5.25 acres of the world he would need to eat or sell , 153.3 pounds of food each day.

if we average that out to cultivating the world average area of cultivated land then he / she would only need to cultivate
10% of his / her 5.25 acres of land.

he would still need to eat / sell 15.33 pounds of food each and every day !!!

the average american eats apx 5.4 pounds of food a day so
he still has to sell or export 9.93 pounds of food per day.

there is enough land to sustain the world's food needs as long as we dont mess it up like we have been doing.
using solar power and wind power we could easily cultivate the deserts and quadtruple the current food production.



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Paul wrote:
"...the citizens you call the first world cant afford to buy the
needed equipment to reduce their resource consumption , ...."

Paul- Read what you wrote here--- maybe you didn't mean to say what it does!

Surely the answer is not to buy items to neutralise consumption--- just don't buy the stuff in the first place!

Actually one of my favourite quotes is that the entire population of the world living at the population density of Manhattan, could all live on the island of Tasmania! (And everyone on earth would be Australian!)

The fact is, that as Bill points out, survival and sustainability depends on much more than mere density.

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Paul, you might like to go back to subsistence farming. I wouldn't. I have no desire to start working from dawn to dusk plowing a few acres of land a day. Actually there has been a series running on PBS, "The Story of England". In that, if I recall correctly, the acre measure was the amount of land a man could plow in one day with an ox team. Anyway after plowing you have to plant, by hand, then keep the weeds out, by hand, and finally harvest, again by hand. If you don't want to do all of that by hand then you have to have modern technology, so you have to pull people off of their 5 acres and put them to work in factories and what have you. That means you are back to our present set up.

Yes there is plenty of land to feed the planet. Of course growing food on that land depends on modern technology. The greatest growth in food production came after we started developing modern technology. With modern technology we first started importing fertilizers so we could start replenishing worn out farm lands. Then we started making fertilizers. So our food production went up some more. Then we started breeding new varieties that produced more. Going back to everybody farming 5 acres would be a serious set back, and everybody would soon have more land than they could farm, as people died off because they couldn't access the modern technology we require to keep the population from having a drastic die off.

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Free download.
http://backtoedenfilm.com/#movie

If'n yer not put off by his references to God as his inspiration, the simplicity of his approach is quite refreshing.


I was addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but then I turned myself around!!




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Bill

We were talking about the amounts of land needed for growing food.

I wasnt sugesting that everyone should start farming on the 5 acres they dont even have.



it was just to show that there is plenty of land to farm on.

and it does show that!

when you wrote the following

Quote:
but you are overlooking the amount of space that is required to support those people.


I was just showing that there is plenty of land/space to support those people.

and I did show that.


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Quote:
surely the answer is not to buy items to neutralise consumption-


solar pannels , Ellis.
reduce resource consumption using solar electricity and solar heat and geothermal heat/cooling and wind power.

these things are what the first world citizens cant afford.



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I will have a look at the video tomorow it sounds like it might be interesting.


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Paul, if you don't want to have people go back to an agrarian life style don't suggest that you do.

And don't forget that our present way of life is probably necessary before we can get to a fully sustainable life style (including reducing the world population). I believe you have a solar water heater which you built yourself. Keep in mind that a solar water heater is pretty high tech. I doubt if you could have built one 150 years ago. The heater requires pipes which require quite a bit of technology to produce. If they are metal you have to have advanced mining technology, refining technology and forming technology. If they are plastic they are made from petroleum, with all the advanced technology involved in that. All of these are very energy consuming. So in order to get to a solar economy we have to go through all of the stages we have been going through.

I just flat don't believe there is any way to get to the level you are talking about without going through our current level.

We aren't really all that dumb. We just need time to observe what is happening and figure out a way to change. And that involves continuing to use the energy we have available until we develop new energy sources. That doesn't mean we can just sit around and wait for things to fall in our lap, we do need to keep working on it. And we can keep on being as smart as we already are.

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Quote:
Actually one of my favourite quotes is that the entire population of the world living at the population density of Manhattan, could all live on the island of Tasmania! (And everyone on earth would be Australian!)


thats interesting , I think your right.

Quote:
The fact is, that as Bill points out, survival and sustainability depends on much more than mere density.


theres a lot of talk about massively reducing the worlds population due to resource depletion and the inability to provide food and water to the people of the world.

facts are that the reduction of the worlds population is to
guarantee that the rich and powerful will have enough resources to survive.

my concern is that these idiots listen to other idiots that
think we dont have the ability to feed and provide for the growing population.

the facts are that we have more than enough resources currently to build and install alternate energy systems that
can feed the growing population.

you see the reason they think we dont have enough resources is because they think tractors and factories can only operate on fossil fuels.

they think that way because thats the way they think the rich and powerful want them to think.

the facts are that what bill is talking about is what bill thinks , not the facts.


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Quote:
I doubt if you could have built one 150 years ago. The heater requires pipes which require quite a bit of technology to produce.


150 years ago?
civil war years!!!

pipes date back much further than 150 yeas ago!

the romans used metal pipes.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html

Quote:
Readily abundant, easily malleable, and with a low melting point (low enough, in fact, to melt in a camp fire), lead (plumbum) was ideal for the production of water pipes, which were fabricated by plumbarii (plumbers) from fitted rolled sheets in a variety of diameters (Vitruvius, VIII.6.1ff; Frontinus, XXXVIIff). Such pipes were used extensively by the Romans but also known to be a potential source of soluble lead. How then to reconcile the two realities?


and since they would be using the metal pipes for heating
purposes this lead pipe could be used today if desired.

you dont need a electric motor to circulate the water in the pipe system as the heat from the sun will cause the warm water to rise and circulate throughout the system.

Quote:
We aren't really all that dumb. We just need time to observe what is happening and figure out a way to change. And that involves continuing to use the energy we have available until we develop new energy sources. That doesn't mean we can just sit around and wait for things to fall in our lap, we do need to keep working on it. And we can keep on being as smart as we already are.


solar cells that produce electricity from sunshine have been around ever since the 1800's

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_solar_cells

its already been over 124 years , are we really so dumb that it is going to take longer than 124 years to figure it out?

YES , we really are that dumb !!!


lets hope we dont continue to be as smart as we already are.

because when energy is concerned our smartness has suffered from stagnation on an almost unbelievable scale compared to
everything else we have gained smartness in.








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Originally Posted By: Paul
150 years ago?
civil war years!!!

pipes date back much further than 150 yeas ago!

the romans used metal pipes.


Could the average citizen go to the store and buy enough to build a solar water heater? 150 years ago the average person had to work full time just to keep a roof over his head, clothes on his back and food on the table. He/she didn't have a lot of spare money to buy non-essentials, such as solar heating supplies.

It has taken a lot of technology to get to the point where we can even think about changing our energy sources. And it has taken a lot of fossil fuels to provide the energy needed to create that technology.

We are pretty darned smart to have come up with the technology to get us where we are. And now we are smart enough to come up with the technology to get us through the bad patch we are going through.

Bill Gill


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Quote:
Could the average citizen go to the store and buy enough to build a solar water heater?


when I built mine there were none in my area.
so the average citizen in my area didnt even know what one is.
so we shoulnt use average citizen, besides I think Im an above avgerage citizen.

Quote:
150 years ago the average person had to work full time ( but full time back then was apx 15 hours a day )just to keep a roof over his head, clothes on his back and food on the table. He/she didn't have a lot of spare money to buy non-essentials, such as solar heating supplies.


thats the way it is today.
believe it or not the solar collector I built cost alot because I used copper pipe and copper fittings.
back then ( a couple of years ago ) a 10 ft 1/2 inch copper pipe was apx $6.00 now that same pipe at the same store has more than doubled its price to over $14.00 each.

back then just the pipe and fittings were apx $125.00

so the average person will probably need to dish out well over a thousand dollars to buy one pre made.

150 years ago you could probably buy a 100 acre farm and a house and barn for $1000.00

this isnt 150 years ago , it is 2012 although I sometimes find it hard to believe.

like the copper pipe prices the solar pannel prices are out of
reach for the average citizen who cannot build his own system.

they are priced so high with installation that by comparison its cheaper to use the electric company.

Quote:
We are pretty darned smart to have come up with the technology to get us where we are. And now we are smart enough to come up with the technology to get us through the bad patch we are going through.


theres nothing wrong with wishful thinking Bill, or hope I just dont think we are smart enough to get through this without causing the suffering of millions if not billions of people world wide.

we live in a profit driven society that refuses to do the right things as long as profit would be lost in doing the right things.

the amount of faith that I have in todays leaders to do the right things is extremely low.

I dont expect todays leaders to do anything that they should
do.

so I dont expect that we will all of a sudden find some magical potion or spell to cast on our patch as you call it.

I prefer to call it a mire and were stuck in it.

up to our necks.


there is one good thing that came out of the copper price increases that I can think of.

I have found that you dont need pipes at all, they cost too much now anyway.

just using cheap wood and plastic sheeting and black paint can heat your house with solar heat.

in fact every window that faces the sun can become a solar air heater that will heat your house free of charge or at least lower your energy bill, Bill.

just by putting up black curtains...



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Originally Posted By: Paul
150 years ago you could probably buy a 100 acre farm and a house and barn for $1000.00

And according to Answers.com the average income in 1860 was $600. If you are maintaining a family on that income you are not going to be buying a farm.

And all of this solar technology depends on the technology and energy sources that have been developed over the past 200 years. Without that development we wouldn't have the population we have and we wouldn't have the capability to develop new energy sources to replace our current energy sources.

And of course, as I stated previously, our biggest problems have been produced by the immense population that we have now. If we could reduce the population by 75% we would find that our problems would be cut back even more. However, we have to start from where we are, and cutting the population by just a few percent is a long term proposition.

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Quote:
And of course, as I stated previously, our biggest problems have been produced by the immense population that we have now. If we could reduce the population by 75%


what was the Title of this thread anyway?

why not reduce the problems that the immense population used to create our problems?

why reduce the population , when the problems will still exist?

Quote:
cutting the population by just a few percent is a long term proposition.


long term?
we dont have long term time to fix our problems.

would you rather we just kill 75% of the worlds population
or
stop using 75% of our problem , which is fossil fuels.

do you think that a human produces more GW/toxic fumes than a gasoline engine?

if you do then do you think you would survive longer locked up
inside a air tight garage with a breathing human being
or a breathing gasoline engine.

they both breath in air and expel fumes.

what would be the point in reducing the population when the more intelligent thing to do would be to reduce fossil fuel usage?








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Originally Posted By: Paul
do you think that a human produces more GW/toxic fumes than a gasoline engine?


Yes, because it is the human who is using the gasoline engine.
Fewer humans = fewer engines. Fewer engines = fewer fumes.

Bill Gill


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